Acclaimed crime writer Peter Temple dies, aged 71

By Jason Steger

March 11, 2018 — 6.24pm

Peter Temple, the first crime writer to win Australia’s most significant literary award, the Miles Franklin, has died. He was 71.

Temple died at home in Ballarat on Thursday. He had had cancer for the past six months, having dealt with a bout of the disease several years ago. He is survived by his wife Anita and his son Nicholas.

Temple was also the first Australian writer to win the British crime writers’ association major award, the Gold Dagger, which he did for The Broken Shore in 2007. It was Truth, the follow-up to that novel, that won the Miles Franklin in 2010. He won five Ned Kelly awards, the local crime-writing prizes, beginning in 1997 for his first book, Bad Debts.

Temple was perhaps best-known for his Jack Irish novels, which featured his Fitzroy-based solicitor-cum-fixer hero. The Jack Irish books – there were four – had a magnificent stable of recurring characters many of whom drank in a fictional pub, The Prince of Prussia. In total he wrote nine novels.

Peter Temple. winner of five Ned Kelly awards for crime fiction.

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The Irish books were adapted for television with Guy Pearce as the eponymous lead.

Crime writer Michael Robotham said Peter Corris might be called the godfather of Australian crime writing, but it was Peter Temple who put it on the international stage.

''He was the first pure crime writer to win his country’s top literary award, which was an incredible achievement. He was such a beautiful writer," Robotham said.

''I will never forget when my first novel came out and I appeared on stage with Peter at the Brisbane Writers festival. The first question to him from an audience member asked what books should she read? He turned to me and said 'you should be reading Michael’s first book; it’s the best debut in a decade'. He was tremendously supportive and he didn’t have to be.’’

At one festival appearance Temple was asked whether anything was taboo in crime writing. He said it was fine to boil a baby and eat it with truffles, but the real taboo was harming the family pet.

He adored dogs and in The Broken Shore gave significant supporting roles to his protagonist Joe Cashin’s black poodles, Temple’s own breed of choice.

''He was to terse blokes with hard jobs and wounded souls what Proust was to memory. He made every sentence count and shot the stragglers.’’

Guy Pearce as Jack Irish.

To interview Temple was a treat. He could be curmudgeonly and caustic. He had a strong view on most things, was invariably perspicacious and frequently funny. He was always worth listening to.

Temple was originally from South Africa and came to Australia after a two-year spell in Germany. He joined The Sydney Morning Herald as education editor and then taught at what is now Charles Sturt university before moving to Melbourne in 1982 to edit Australian Society and then establish the editing and publishing course at RMIT.

But as a South African he created authentically Australian novels, peopled with the most Australian characters. His publisher, Michael Heyward, said: ''As an expat he heard us in a way we could hardly hear each other.

''We were so lucky to be able to publish a writer who was a poet who understood narrative and put it to the service of Australian literature.’’

When his Miles Franklin-winning novel Truth was published, British crime writer John Harvey told The Age that Temple used the crime novel to strip away layers of hypocrisy. ''Truth was a pretty apt title for one of Peter’s books,’’ he said. ''He has a knack of pinning down the day-to-day nature of people’s lives and laying bare their weaknesses and obsessions.’’

The whole business was about truth, Temple once told me, creating the illusion of truth.

''If there’s going to be truth in it, it’s about the emotional response, it’s not about the accuracy of the detail. It’s about the fact that it spoke to you.’’